Words on a page that might help me, or you, someday, maybe.

Title

Today I decided to change the title of my novel. It turns out that I kind of don’t like what it used to be called. You know how when you say a word over and over again then it doesn’t sound like a word anymore? Like if you say “from… from… from… from…” eventually the word “from” loses all meaning? Well I think my book title was kind of like that. It had lost all meaning.

Whenever I’d tell someone that I’ve written a novel they immediately ask two (perfectly reasonable) questions. 1) What’s it called? 2) What’s it about? I hate answering both of those questions. And I guess I don’t like answering them because I don’t like what it’s called and I don’t like what it’s about – but that’s just the crippling self doubt talking. I never liked saying the name because I now realise that I never really liked the name. I did change it once before, and now I’ve changed it again.

I changed it because I was mocking up a front cover for it. I should probably mention that this book isn’t published. It’s complete, and finished, but not published. But I’m thinking of getting a printed copy of it with a hardcover and a sleeve and all that good stuff. So for that I need a cover, and for that I need a title that I’m happy with. So I changed the title.

The one I have now is better, I think.

I did print the book out properly once before, and had it bound into a softcover version but it wasn’t a professional job and it didn’t have a cover. I just did it for my Mum’s birthday last year. Thinking back, it’s kind of depressing that that was 18 months ago and there has been no significant progress in the official publishing of the book past the changing of it’s name. Oh well. I’ve sent it off to agents they just all keep rejecting me – the bastards.

There is still the self-publishing route, I guess. Which allows me to click upload on the Kindle store and have my book purchasable as an eBook over Amazon. Before that, though, the next thing I want to do is to get a hardback version of it printed. There’s companies like Blurb that do that pretty cheap, so that shouldn’t be an issue. I’d just rather, you know, someone came a long and gave me a large cheque and said “We’ll handle the printing, shipping and distribution if you just take the royalties, deal? okay”